Censorship: Apple News in China

2 years ago

News Apple has no citizenship in China according to the New York Times. The application from Apple for online media is for now available only to US, UK and Australia. But its Chinese expatriates application users have found that this one was disabled on the Chinese territory, the application stating that “Apple News is not supported in this region” instead it’s Articles supposed to provide.

A blocking came from Apple

The Chinese government is known for its censorship practices of certain content, the Great Firewall is not an empty word. The government imposes many restrictions on US and foreign companies wishing to offer their services within China, a lucrative market that attracts the greed of the giants of Silicon Valley. For Apple, China is a new market that has rapidly become the second most important region behind the US in terms of revenue.

Apple declined to comment on the information. The New York Times suppose this total blockage of the application comes to overcome the lack of system for Apple to block certain content on its application on Chinese territory. Blocking is an initiative from Apple, the daily quoted the example of a user who noticed that the content and articles he had downloaded to his device before arriving in China have also been blocked by the application.

This type of behavior suggests that blocking is not a simple filtering servers Apple News, but a programmed behavior in the application, which turns off when it detects that the unit is on Chinese network.